Review of Hall of Smoke by H. M. Long
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Hall of Smoke, H. M. Long’s Viking-inspired epic fantasy debut novel, follows a priestess of the Goddess of War as she tries to set things right after having failed her deity—and discovers there’s far more to her world and its pantheon than she’s been taught when she becomes entangled in a war between the gods of the Old and New Worlds. Hessa was only a child when she learned she was […]
Review of The Ikessar Falcon by K. S. Villoso
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Although the bulk of my reading is speculative fiction because of its myriad worlds and endless possibilities, I primarily read for characters. In particular, I appreciate stories with characters so vividly multifaceted that I have complicated, difficult-to-articulate feelings about them—when I don’t simply love or hate them, when the way I think about them changes from moment to moment, when I’m left uncertain precisely what to think of them because they […]
Guest Post by The Gilded Ones Author Namina Forna
Happy book release day to Namina Forna! I’ve been excited about her debut novel, The Gilded Ones, ever since I read an excellent interview with her on Refinery29 discussing why she wrote a YA epic fantasy book in which women literally bleed gold, among other subjects—and I’m thrilled to have a guest post by her to share today! Read an Excerpt About THE GILDED ONES: The most anticipated fantasy of 2021. In this world, girls are outcasts by blood […]
Review of The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. The Bone Shard Daughter is the first book in Andrea Stewart’s Asian-inspired debut epic fantasy trilogy, The Drowning Empire, set in an archipelago ruled by a mad-scientist-like Emperor. He creates beings known as constructs, which are sewn together from an assortment of animal parts and animated by bone shard magic powered by his subjects. These vary in complexity ranging from those ordered to follow straightforward commands to complicated structures that regulate different […]
Review of The Obsidian Tower by Melissa Caruso
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. The Obsidian Tower was easily one of my most anticipated books of this year after reading Melissa Caruso’s first trilogy, Swords and Fire (The Tethered Mage, The Defiant Heir, The Unbound Empire), and I loved it as well. This novel is the first book in the Rooks and Ruin trilogy, a series with new characters set in the same world as Swords and Fire about 150 years after the end of the previous books. Given […]
Review of The Wolf of Oren-Yaro by K. S. Villoso
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. “They called me the Bitch Queen, the she-wolf, because I murdered a man and exiled my king the night before they crowned me.” Thus opens The Wolf of Oren-Yaro, the first installment in K. S. Villoso’s Chronicles of the Bitch Queen trilogy. Both this and the second book in this series, set in an epic fantasy world whose “worldbuilding is a love letter to the Philippines,” were originally self published, and […]
